The present invention relates generally to wheeled platter carts or tray carrying racks for transporting commodities on trays or platters from one location to another, for example from a storage area or freezer to customer accessible shelving units of a grocery store. It is particularly concerned with a platter cart which is nestable for reducing storage area requirements when the cart is not in use.
Platter carts are generally large and have a vertical support frame with caster wheels at the lower end of the frame, and a plurality of spaced horizontal shelves of rectangular shape for supporting generally rectangular trays carrying food or the like. Such carts are normally not nestable, due to the shape of the frame and the closed rectangular periphery of the shelves, and therefore take up considerable amounts of storage space when not in use. It is difficult to design such carts to be nestable while still maintaining sufficient support for rectangular trays, and allowing the trays to be readily placed onto shelves and lifted off shelves as required. However, some nestable arrangements have been provided in prior art platter carts or tray racks. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,125,520, for example, a tray rack is provided with tray supports or shelves which are z-shaped to allow for nesting. This has the disadvantage that racks cannot be nested together in a straight line, but are offset to one side of the central axis of the first rack as they are successively nested together. This does not provide an optimum storage configuration, and also has structural problems.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,928,681 of Wilson, the tray carrying racks have generally U-shaped top and bottom members which are tapered to allow for nesting, and the tray supports are simply angle members for supporting the corners of trays. The tray supports are arranged to telescope together when the racks are nested together. This may give insufficient support to trays in some cases.
Another known alternative is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,272,528 of Young et al., in which the shelves of the platter cart may be tilted upwardly for nesting when not in use.